


Urban Warfare

by doctorate_in_realology



Series: Overwatch One-Offs [7]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action, Air Force, F/F, Fighter Pilots, Fucking hipster, Humor, If I do add another chapter, Lena Oxton loves Top Gun, Might stand better as a one-off, Might throw another chapter on this for kicks but I dunno yet, Military Jargon, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9560234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorate_in_realology/pseuds/doctorate_in_realology
Summary: Tracer, McCree, Amélie, Reinhardt and Pharah are dispatched to repel a Talon assault on a massive city centre.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably do something less action-y soon. I've been slackin' on the fluff, mea culpa. I'll think of something soon.
> 
> For now here is the gang doing coolguy shit.

“Pull your socks up, Jesse!”

McCree dove to the floor as a hail of pulse fire whizzed overhead, piercing through thin wood panels and shattering panes of glass. The men beyond the partition flailed under the impacts and collapsed into the floor.

“Did you get ‘em?” McCree shouted.

“Yeah, up you go, cowboy!” Lena shot her eyes to the entrances of the room—overturned tables and spent shell casings littering its floor—as more charged in, opening fire. The air was alight with ballistics again, sparing them not even a moment.

Lena and McCree dove into hiding. McCree sprang over the oak wood counter behind which he’d hidden and the cracks of his revolver reverberated throughout the room, the reason for Peacekeeper’s namesake on ruthless display.

“Reinhardt, where are you, big guy?” Lena shouted into her communicator. “Jesse and I are pinned down here!”

_“Whereabouts, my friends?”_

“We’re—Jesse, where are we?”

“In a restaurant!”

“What kind? This is a Vietnamese place, right?”

“I didn’t have time to leaf through the fuckin’ menu, Lena!”

“Don’t get your knickers in a knot, I’m trying to paint a picture here!” She redirected her address to Reinhardt. “Vietnamese restaurant, I think, third floor! Talon’s in here with us, swarms of ‘em!”

_“Did you say third floor?”_

“Yeah! Leg it, Reinsy, we’re in hot water h—”

The wall burst apart into chunks of drywall and stone shrapnel. Emerging from the cloud of dust was Reinhardt, bellowing laughter and whirling his hammer in deadly arcs, laying waste to pillars, furniture, and men alike. Choosing instead to remain in safety, McCree and Lena held their position behind their concealments until the sound of gunfire pinging helplessly into Reinhardt’s armour had ceased.

Lena tactfully poked her head out from behind the deformed pillar she had been hiding behind to confirm that the room was clear, save for a seven-foot-four steel-clad German fellow.

“Thanks for the back-up. Nice entrance!” she applauded, as she gestured to the gaping maw that was once part of a wall.

“Thank you!” Reinhardt said. “I have my moments.”

 _“We’re going to need a few more from you, Reinhardt,”_ Fareeha added over the transmitter. _“They’ve scrambled fighters—seven-hundred knots out and closing fast.”_

“How many?” Lena asked.

_“Radar contact’s showing six closing in, and another six on standby two-thousand knots out at angels sixteen.”_

“Roger, Far. We can’t leave just yet—district’s been evacuated but Talon isn’t pulling out. Gonna have to thin the herd a bit, force ‘em into a retreat.”

_“Copy. I’ll keep the fighters off your back as long as I can—dammit! Two of them broke off, they’re heading straight for you! You have about five seconds until they’re all over you and Amélie!”_

The howling roar of their engines fell upon their ears. Reinhardt glanced quickly to McCree and Lena, his helmet disguising his toothy grin as he’d deduced a sound course of action.

He leapt from the building through the wall and out onto the street, twirling mid-air and lurching his hammer downwards as a jet flew close enough to him that but scant centimetres were all that stood between them and a mach two collision.

The head of his hammer slammed into the top of the fuselage, reducing the fighter to a ball of roiling fire in a flash. He landed in a crouch, standing to his full stature as the inferno careened into the street and burrowed a jagged, flaming trench into the asphalt.

The other howled behind him. He leapt forward and dug the hammer’s head into the ground, digging up chunks of asphalt as he dragged it through the earth and swung upwards. Flames flung from its head and flew into the path of the second fighter.

The blistering projectile split the wing from the jet’s hull. Smoke billowed from the scar in its flank, and it spun through the air until crunching into the earth, leaving behind a smoldering crater.

“The fighters are down, Fareeha!” he bellowed into his communicator.

“Knocked that one out of the park, big man!” McCree shouted from above, peering out of the hole Reinhardt had left.

“Are you taking the piss?!” Lena dumbfoundedly interjected, launching beside McCree. “Barmy bastard knocked it out of the bloody stratosphere! Reinhardt, that was _awesome!”_

He roared with laughter. “I told you I had my moments!”

Lena switched the frequency to address their spectators back home. “You guys saw that, right?!”

 _“Yes, yes, we saw it Lena, it was very cool,”_ Winston placated. The rest of the team was watching the live feed of the mission via the various cameras placed on those deployed, such as the one in Lena’s goggles, or Fareeha’s and Reinhardt’s helmets. _“Now, I believe downtown Toronto is still a warzone?”_

Talon, in a rare and aggressive show of force, boasted the manpower at their disposal by launching a wide-scale attack on a populated metropolis. Ambitious, even for them. It was a scare tactic, a way to remind the world that they had the means and the willingness to start slaughtering at any given moment. The city’s security and police forces were quick to respond and carry out evacuation contingencies, and luckily kept most of the fighting—vicious though it was—contained to a few blocks.

“Haven’t forgotten, big guy, we’re on it,” Lena chimed back, before switching frequencies again. “How you doing, Ame? How’re things looking down there?”

Dual gunshots resonated in her ear, audible both in her earpiece and in the distance. _“Reinhardt’_ _s joined me and we_ _have Talon on the defensive. I_ _think I’ve_ _finally convinced these boorish police officers to stop levelling their weapons at me, too.”_

“Just gonna play devil’s advocate here, love—you are a notorious assassin. Can’t blame the bobbies for bein’ a touch skeptical.”

Amélie grunted in reply. _“What’s our escape plan?”_

“Still working on that. Our ship got mulched.”

Lena spotted a dropship several blocks away, ferrying more troops into the fray. Her eyes sparked and her brow furrowed in thought.

“But I think I’ve got an idea,” she said as she watched it descend.

_“And?”_

“No time, gotta move fast. Be back lickety-split!” Lena parted with an obnoxious _mwah_ before closing the channel. She leapt from the building and blinked safely onto the debris-ridden sidewalk seconds later, turning back to shout at McCree.

“Heading off to lend Reinhardt and Ame a hand?”

“You betcha,” he shouted back. “Where you off to?”

“Gonna go nick us a ride!”

Before he could protest and ask her to expound her scheme, she was off in a sprint down the street, leaping and bounding and blinking from block-to-block. Her eyes were peeled for a suitable building from which to execute her plan.

She opened a channel with Fareeha. “Talk to me, Goose.”

_“What?”_

“It’s—ugh, never mind. How’re the skies looking?”

 _“Lots of hostiles, still. I’ve got maneuverability but they’ve got—woah!”_ Lena heard the telltale _woosh_ of a missile whipping past in the background of Fareeha’s comm. _“The numbers,”_ Fareeha reassuringly returned. _“I’m holding my own, though, don’t worry about me.”_

“Think you could do me a favour?” Lena asked, exertion slurring her words as she hurled down the street.

_“I’ll do my best.”_

“See the dropship that just showed up? About a click away, should be at your eight o’clock.”

A short pause.

_“I see it. Need me to bring it down?”_

“I need you to chase it towards me. I’ll strobe a building and be waiting on the roof for you.”

_“I’ll have to break away immediately afterwards; these fighters will be right on my tail and I don’t want to lead them to the others. That means you’ll have one shot at whatever it is you plan to do.”_

“Sure. See you in a jiffy.”

Lena whipped up the fire escape and shouldered open the door leading to the roof but a minute later. Fareeha had timed it out beautifully—she was inbound with the troop transport directly downwind.

 _Good, they’ve got the cabin doors open._ _Would’ve been_ _pretty embarrassing if they didn’t._

Lena assumed a bullet start stance, eyes narrowing on the lip of the building. The dropship came closer, and closer, and closer, until it was near enough that she could fly full-tilt to the edge, and jump.

She leapt from the roof, sealed her eyes shut, and…

When she opened them, she was sitting in the hold of the dropship, having timed the blink to absolute perfection.

Additionally, she was also sitting among three very surprised Talon mercenaries.

“‘Ello, chums!” she jeered, before engaging them.

She shot to her feet and kicked the weapons from their hands, making short work of them and tossing them from the ship as it hurdled through the air. The pilot entered next, and exited in the same fashion as his compatriots. Lena took his seat, along with a few moments to familiarize herself with the interface as the ship steered itself through the maze of buildings.

It was strange, being behind the flight controls after so long. Familiar, but strange. In an instant, it all came rushing back to her.

Training at Linton-on-Ouse and Valley, happier than she’d ever been that her dreams of becoming a fully-fledged pilot had come to fruition, and graduating at the top of her class, no less; every test squadron at Boscombe absolutely scrambling over one another to have _her_ be assigned as their test pilot for whatever projects they could drum up; her wingmates from Squadron 6 back in Lossiemouth—Davis “Pilsner” Hill, Aaron “Gilly” MacGillvary, William Wesley “Wes” O’Keefe—all of them—

And being the youngest pilot ever to be inducted into Overwatch’s flight branch.

She remembered the Slipstream.

Her grip on the yoke tightened. Her breath became short and unsteady.

Suddenly, Lena Oxton was doubting herself.

_God, why didn’t I think this through? I can’t go through that again. I can’t… It’s been ages since I’ve flown… I can’t do it again, not another Slipstream…_

_No. No, that won’t happen. You’re talking bollocks, Oxton. Pull yourself together, come on. This was your own idea after all, and you’ve got your mates counting on you. You can do this. You can do this._

“I am gonna bloody do this.”

Determination reinforced by sheer force of will, her hands hovered over the console in preparation. “Right, what’s this kite got under the hood…” she said to herself, thinking aloud. “GNSS navigation interface selection, aircraft direction functionality—not gonna need that—one-to-one response/hit ratio firing solution plotters—could probably do without those too, actually—gimballed wing-mounted engines, rotary cannons... What are those, Typhons? _Top._ ”

She took a deep breath, and steeled herself.

She was ready.

She forced down on the throttle and _flew._

 

*******

 

Talon had mobilized an armoured column and were forging down the street to make another push. Like waves against a shore, the sides clashed with one another.

Reinhardt crunched his hammer into the grill of an armoured vehicle that had come hurtling down the road towards him. It arched into the air and spun, landing chassis-up in a disfigured metal heap. Amélie and McCree, as if competing with one another, were snapping shots off into windshields and the helmets of the light truck turret operators circling them like vultures.

Amélie leapt onto the roof of an APC and tore the hatch open. Its forward motion had halted, and it rocked from side-to-side on its electromagnetic propulsion wells as a fight raged within it. One of the crewmen crawled out of the hatch, only to be yanked into the interior again with a fearful cry.

Moments later, its autocannons alighted and shredded into the convoy, reducing vehicles to blood-spattered metal shreds. Amélie let fly a shell from the main gun, plastering a truck against the wall of a building.

Vehicles identical to the one Amélie had commandeered raged down the street. McCree shouted a warning into the comm.

“Ame, get outta there, you got more APCs inbound!” he shouted.

The personnel carriers in question closed in and trained their guns on the now-hostile light tank. Explosions rocked the vehicle violently, crushing and scorching its hull. Amélie scrambled from the opening in its roof and leapt from the vehicle as it erupted into a pillar of fire behind her.

She was but a second too late, as the shockwave slammed into her full-force. She sailed through the air, smashing into the windshield of a defunct police cruiser and cracking the glass inwards.

Reinhardt converged on her immediately, shouldering the impacts of the tank fire with his shield.

“Amélie! Are you alright?”

She vaulted from the hood of the car with a furious growl and leveled her rifle at the opposing soldiers, paying the blood painting a grim portrait down the side of her face no heed. The muzzle spat fire, and as three thunderclaps split the air, four soldiers fell lifelessly to the concrete.

“I’m _fine!”_ she shouted back through gritted teeth.

“Lena, where are you?!” McCree shouted into the open channel as he joined their side. “We’re up shit creek without a ­ _boat_ , never mind a paddle!”

Silence was his answer.

“C’mon, girl, if you have a plan, now would be a real good time for it!”

Silence again. He was about to call out to her a third time when the whirring of an unfamiliar engine sounded overhead.

A dropship tore through the air around the corner of a building and flew directly above them. A storm of gunfire rained from its fore-mounted cannons and spewed shell casings onto the street like superheated hail.

Bullets tore through the APCs as if they were made of wet tissue paper. A volley ruptured one of their ammunition racks and the vehicle burst apart like a tank of compressed gas. The other was all but bisected by the gunfire, ripped nearly in two right down the middle.

McCree finally received a reply—long, drawn-out and triumphant.

_“Woooooohoooooo!”_

He laughed in jubilant conformity. “No way! Lena, that’s you up there?!”

_“You know it! Tracer’s got her wings back!”_

Reinhardt guffawed over the roar of the engine as Lena descended over the street, Talon’s forces scattering like ants from a boot. The troop carrier’s cannons spooled to life again and rained fire upon the fleeing foes, plumes of concrete and dust and crimson spurts launching into the air.

She lowered the ship to the road as the last of the soldiers fell, clouds of dust spilling out from beneath the engines. The hold doors opened and dropped onto the asphalt, revealing a bright, chipper young pilot beyond, snapping her trademark salute.

“All aboard!” she shouted.

The trio boarded the ship, applauded by the police who bade them a grateful farewell. Secured in their seats, Lena tore through the air.

“Fareeha, we’re coming to get you, bearing two-six-two. All finished up groundside.”

 _“Copy,”_ came the curt reply, her focus still concentrated on the fighters.

In short order, the ship was at Fareeha’s side, its hatch open and beckoning her to enter. She flew into the hold and took the co-pilot’s seat before Lena took off again, pursued by the remaining jets.

“Good job on keeping them busy, Far,” Lena commended. “Didn’t hear a peep from them.”

Fareeha pulled the helmet from her head, shaking her hair out as she placed it at her side. “We’re not out of the woods, yet,” she said, peering out of the window. “These are unmanned fighters—they’re not going to leave us alone until we’re a smoldering heap.”

“Unmanned, eh?” Lena echoed. “Are these the Viper drones we’ve been hearing about? The ones modeled after those Omnic Harpy units?”

Fareeha nodded. “Tenacious beyond measure. I’ll start plotting firing solutions—”

“No no no, don’t!” Lena quickly implored. “Before we're even able to get a solution lock on them, their sensors will pick it up, see it from a mile away. Keep the firing controls slaved to my terminal, I’ll do it manually.”

“Right,” Fareeha concurred before cracking a small smile. “Almost like you know what you’re doing.”

Lena returned the grin, bright white and devious. “Almost!”

She threw the ship into a hard-starboard yaw, pivoting the engines such that they maintained their forward momentum as the ship flipped into reverse, opening fire. Two Vipers fragmented and were swallowed by fire, the infernos nosediving into the water of Lake Ontario. Lena and Fareeha cheered, and their earpieces hummed with applause.

 _“Nice shooting, Lena!”_ Winston said. _“You’re on your way back?”_

She flipped the ship back about-face, taking off into evasion again. “Working on it! We’ve got our hands full with these guys!”

_“Understood. Be careful out there.”_

“Roger, Winston, be back before you know it!” She turned to Fareeha. “How many are on us?”

“Six, now. The first group has been eliminated but their backup is what’s after us.”

Lena slammed the reverse thrusters—if not for the inertial dampeners, all five of the ship’s occupants would have been pasted against the windshield. The fighters whipped right past them, lining themselves up perfectly. She decommissioned another Viper before the others reacted and converged on them again.

“Five baddies left!” Lena cheered. She glanced over to Fareeha, who was undoing the straps of her seat’s harness and donning her helmet again.

“Off to run some interference,” she said as she was exiting the cockpit. Lena knocked her fist against the pauldron of the Raptora.

“Give ‘em hell, Far.”

She smirked devilishly—that was exactly the plan.

The door slowly opened before Fareeha, who stood tall enough in the hold that she had to duck to avoid knocking her head against the ceiling. The afternoon sun—invading the cabin as the door descended—silhouetted her against the horizon.

She crouched at the edge, punched the afterburners, and launched from the ship, rocking it under the force of her takeoff. She speared into the belly of a passing Viper like a human javelin, and emerged from the subsequent explosion on the other side, a pillar of smoke and fire in her wake.

She was going to be in shit for that one—she was pretty sure she heard Angela shriek in the background of her comm.

The group of unmanned fighters split, two of them bearing down on Fareeha. She launched into the sky and arched backwards, dropping into a nosedive. HEIAP Gatling rounds buzzed past her, trailing her far closer than she’d have liked.

She propelled upwards just above the lake’s surface. Jets of water fired skyward as the rounds pummelled into the waves. The Raptora’s point-defense systems blared a warning, informing her of missile lock—Fareeha launched countermeasure flares, luminous motes leaping from her suit and sparing her an untimely demise.

Micro-missile racks extended from her shoulders and legs, their payloads primed. Fareeha twirled in the air and launched them from their housings, the miniscule warheads slamming into the Vipers, along with the other missiles they’d fired following the dissolution of her flares, and turned them into flickering cinders.

Two remained, and they were tailing the ship with dogged persistence. One of them broke off of its course and instead pursued Fareeha. It let loose a flock of missiles.

She hooked and swirled through the air in evasive maneuvers, engaged in a lethal airborne bolero with the storm of projectiles. “Lena, they’ve got a lock on me! My countermeasures are spent!”

 _“I can’t shake this one either!”_ Silence cut short their frenzied conversation as Lena paused in contrivance. _“Have you ever threaded a needle before?”_

“Why?”

_“Got a plan; I need you to fly directly at us.”_

“What?!”

_“Just trust me! And whatever you do, don’t lose those missiles!”_

Fareeha, despite her best judgement, obliged. She overtook the dropship and hooked back, flying on a head-on collision course.

“Sixteen hundred knots closure—are you sure you know what you’re doing?!”

_“I haven’t the faintest fuckin’ idea!”_

“Great,” Fareeha disdained. Well, Lena hadn’t done wrong by her in the past—she supposed she didn’t have much of a choice, anyway.

At three thousand-eighty-five metres, Fareeha stayed her course.

At two thousand-four hundred-sixty-eight metres, Lena was still rocketing towards her.

At one thousand-eight hundred-fifty-one metres, the missiles nipped at Fareeha’s heels like ravenous dogs.

At one thousand-two hundred-thirty-four metres, the Vipers lined up behind the dropship, ready to pluck it from the sky.

Lena spun the troop transport to port and its doors fell wide open. McCree had been watching Fareeha through the windshield from the cabin since the moment she appeared before them in the distance.

“Uh, Lena?!”

“Hold on!” she shouted from the cockpit.

McCree turned back to the Raptora tearing through the sky. His and Amélie’s fingers dug into the leather of their seats, while Reinhardt’s curled around a support bar, his knuckles surely white beneath his gauntlets.

Fareeha closed in, speed blistering and showing no signs of faltering. She put everything she had into the engines and slammed the afterburners, hurling through the cabin of the ship with an explosive cortege in her wake by mere feet.

She sailed out the other side and lurched upwards, rocketing into the clouds. The missiles hadn’t the time to adjust their trajectory, and crunched into the fighters’ canopies, snuffing them out and tossing the decrepit husks into the water.

“Holy shit!” McCree exclaimed with shock and disbelief. He laughed nervously, quickly developing into an uncontrollable fit of hysterics.

Amélie could hear Lena joining him in the pilot’s seat, cracking a smile of her own and letting her head fall against the seat. Reinhardt chimed in with his own uproarious howling.

“Excellent flying, my friends, excellent flying!” he shouted.

Fareeha touched down in the cabin, the doors sealing behind her. Lena joined them shortly thereafter, plotting an autopiloted course for the time being.

“That was _nuts!”_ she shouted, an unmollifiable smile affixed to her face. “Everyone’s alright, yeah?”

“I think that shaved a few years off my lifespan, but yeah, I’m good,” McCree said. Reinhardt laughed and assured them similarly, while Amélie nodded quietly in response.

Fareeha put a finger to her ear. “Horus Black, this is Pharah. Skies are clear and we’re headed home.”

 _“Fantastic!”_ Winston said, clearly relieved. _“It’s good to hear from you. We’ll—”_

Fareeha heard the communicator being snatched from Winston’s grasp, accompanied by his surprised exclamation.

_“Fareeha Amari, are you actively trying to give me a heart attack?!”_

Everyone in the cabin could hear Angela bellowing out of the comm. It took Lena and McCree everything they had to refrain from frenetically cackling.

 _“You flew_ through _a jet!”_ she shouted on.

“Your accent always thickens whenever you’re angry,” Fareeha replied coolly. “…It’s kind of sexy, actually.”

“Oh, you cheeky devil, you are in _so_ much shite,” Lena whispered.

_“You’re not off the hook either, Lena!”_

Lena flinched and almost reactionarily ripped the transmitter from her ear.

“You almost deafened me, Angie!” she fired back through a smile.

 _“And_ you _almost got incinerated!”_

“Exactly,” Lena replied. “We _almost_ got incinerated!”

Angela made an indignant guttural grunt before handing the comm back to Winston, who anxiously went back to addressing the team after Angela slammed the door behind her.

_“Well, uh… We’ll see you five soon. Please don’t do anything else too outlandish, or our poor doctor may turn to alcoholism.”_

“Roger, big guy, we’ll stay out of trouble. See you later.” With that, she switched off the channel and her grin broadened to shit-eating proportions.

“We’re going to die when we get home, aren’t we?”

“Hippocratic Oath, remember?” Fareeha said.

“Okay, _you_ are _definitely_ going to die when we get home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I might throw another chapter onto this but I'm not sure if I'll bother yet. If I do then THAT one will be fluffier than fuckin' feathers, ought to balance shit out.


End file.
